Sudden drop in sales May 2022

[partfinds]

Please, report here if you recently within a week or so experienced sudden drop in sales. We can then ask Velvet to pass it on to technical team for review of the accounts. https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Updates-are-happening-to-some-item-specifics-and-category/m-p/...

[play.tr]

Nothing but a lot of no sense bla bla from the support.

Thank you for contacting eBay. My name is Parvez and I'm glad to get an opportunity to assist you today.

I can certainly understand that you are concerned about not getting the sales and also the views are coming as zero on your listing with promoted listing and you are unable view items on your store. I really appreciate your effort for bringing this concern to us. I will surely help you with your query today.

Upon reviewing your account in detail, I was able to see the active listings are perfectly visible on your store and buyers will be able to reach to your listings without any issues. I have also attached a screen shot for the same.

Further, allow me to share that, earlier when we used to display the lifetime viewes on the listing, which left out important information about recent performance trends. Now, we started adjusting your page views to show a rolling 30-day count. We’re also adding a new listing traffic history report, where you can access page view data for the previous 2 years.

This updated 30-day view count makes it easier to see trends as they’re happening and adjust your listings to perform at their best.

Having the right data at your fingertips is key to getting your listings to perform at their best. To give you clearer insight into your listings’ performance, we’re changing to a more accurate way of counting page views, and updating how we display traffic data on your listings. You’ll still be able to access data for the past 2 years in a new listing traffic history report.

You can learn more about this new change on the below page:

https://www.ebay.com/sellercenter/resources/seller-updates/2022-spring/business#traffic

Rest assured, at this point, there are no limits or any restrictions placed on your account/listings. I am sure that you will be gaining the sales very soon and will also be able to generate profits. However, there is nothing to worry, I will help you with a few suggestions that can improve your sales.

I can see that you're giving away aggregate 4-5% of your profit just for added visibility (Promote your listings campaigns) but if you drop your items price by 4-5% then it is most likely that your listings may receive higher impressions, click-through-rate and hence, sales because buyers have tendency to search for the items using "Lower price & P&P" filter.

I would also request you to check your nearest successful competitors listing and see the options they have added on their items to make more sales out of it, so you can adopt those tactics and you would be seeing drastic changes in terms of views and  sales on your account.

Also here are some more tips for you to increase your performance which I think you will consider to take a look at:

·Free Packaging and Postage: Try to offer free shipping, listings offering free shipping will get a boost in search and appear higher.

·Title: The listing title needs to be relevant for the listing. It is important to not use keywords in the title which are not relevant for the listings. This keyword spamming will lead to more search impression but no sales. Therefore, the search impression over recent sales ratio will decrease.

·Offer competitive prices: The better value a listing is, the more buyers it is likely to get, and therefore the higher its recent sales score.

You can list items according to our best match and see the difference. Here is the help page link to learn more about the same:

https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/listings/listing-tips/optimising-listings-best-match?id=4166

Rest assured, its because of the reputed sellers like you eBay is growing into a big brand and so we have no reasons to restrict your account for no valid reasons. eBay generates profits only when the sellers like you are generating a good sales.

Thank you for choosing eBay. Stay safe and take care.

Kind Regards,

Parvez A.
eBay customer support

[thewoodencoathanger]

Let me guess, Parvez has never sold an item on eBay in his life? 

[terristreasuretrove4u]

I have had steady sales for 10 years, albeit less the last few years. The last month, my sales are down 64%. Items that always sell have 0 views. This is all date coincident with the no bot counting. The platform is seriously malfunctioning. The search results are off kilter - if I search for an article of clothing and hit the size, I get weird sizes and things of different categories - this is also date coincident with the bot counting change. Today I went to list an item and my description was deleted, and then I was not able to type. The amount of listings in different clothing categories that used to have thousands of items now have under 100. I have never seen the platform so screwed up. This is seriously disappointing. 

[lawnmowerpartsstore2]

Its definitely not the same anymore

[jahood1984]

Here's what I think, eBay didn't remove "bot views", I think they removed a big load of what they called bot accounts (snipers, kind of), such as folks that used apps to auto buy items at certain prices or even send offers.  I mentioned previously I still do ok selling CPUs (but way slower) but basically not much else, when I'd list CPUs I'd look for the cheapest one listed and beat it's price by a dollar0 so I'm the cheapest one listed.  It was not uncommon that within 10-60 seconds after clicking list it was sold, even the entire quantity sometimes up to 10.  That doesn't happen since the "bot view"is changes... It's also not happening with my ram lots anymore and select few other things.  I suspect they knew they were dropping mass buying accounts and did the "view count change" to throw us off, maybe they deemed them non rule abiding using apps?  I know others that used software to watch listings while they were away that met search criteria so when they got home they look at exactly what they are after in a price range and not buy chunk.  I don't think most people are aware of the endless 3rd party eBay apps to do stuff or that someone who knows just enough coding can create one in minutes.

  This is just an opinion, I haven't quite read into what eBay claimed these "bot views" we're exactly but I am certain the people who were using the apps aren't now.  Perhaps in that changes it made it so apps would have to be rewrote, not hard to do.  Maybe even implement some things to make the app harder to write (also not hard to).  

  I've never done it with eBay but when I was into Bitcoin I wrote an app to buy various crypto below a certain price and then sell at a certain price, it worked quite well.  

[terristreasuretrove4u]

I like your take, but what would be the purpose of doing so? The search results are seriously screwed up, and items are not showing up. Are they rewriting the algo? If so, why? Interested in your take on this. Thanks. 

[jahood1984]

I honestly couldn't say.  One things for sure though that even if I wrote a quick app to search and buy items at a certain price or even watch them, the search results are too skewed to be reliable.  So anyone updating a similar type app, it's going to be hit or miss at best.  I hope we get some answers though....

[ship_japan]

Add me 

Went from 10items per day, to barely 1 item per month.

[lawnmowerpartsstore2]

ouch

[inhawaii]

Please add me to that list too.  Boy that's a long list!

I think people want to buy my stuff but somehow ebay is preventing them from doing so.

[mr_lincoln]

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@partfinds wrote:

Please, report here if you recently within a week or so experienced sudden drop in sales. We can then ask Velvet to pass it on to technical team for review of the accounts. https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Updates-are-happening-to-some-item-specifics-and-category/m-p/...

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velvet@ebay  I came across this thread and also saw the one referenced in your post ... just wondering if this is still a "thing" and members who are seeing their sales drop abnormally should still be reporting it to "someone" ... since Sales follow Views  which follows Impressions all three of those for me have steadily dropped but it started before the mid-May time frame this thread refers to.  Impressions prior to mid may dropped by 80.5% 

That was abrupt ... then just last week I did a check almost everyday and Impressions just seem to keep going down ... I have 23.5% of my items with ZERO Views and another 18% with ONE View ... that's 41.5% (almost half) of my items that have virtually NO visibility anywhere on the internet ...

So Impressions are down about 50% and so are my sales ... I have provided ALL the REQUIRED Item Specifics but on that just has me miffed on the new Listing tool is the UPC code which is critical in logarithms finding things ... YET I get the "Match not found" screen EVERY TIME I put a valid UPC code in a listing ... not ONCE has the system said the UPC matches ... and we're talking hundreds of listings.

What I noticed was things changing as early as the November 2021 category shuffling eBay did just before the Holidays and the sudden increase in Buyers posting here complaining that they can't find things ...

[nilis13]

I was added to this list a while ago. No changes.  I doubt anyone is looking at this list.  An update would be good. Issue began in May for me and many others. 

[mr_lincoln]

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@nilis13 wrote:

I was added to this list a while ago. No changes.  I doubt anyone is looking at this list.  An update would be good. Issue began in May for me and many others. 

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@nilis13  For many it started before May ... I saw the decline in sales and impressions start before the Views count change ... January this year was the only month of noteworthy sales ... the rest have basically shown no growth after the trend the last couple of years ...

While I LOVE "Selling" on eBay ... "Selling" is the operative word ...

[nilis13]

I totally agree with you. I've had my ups and downs,  but this is by far the worst its ever been.  

[blacktopautoparts]

It has been very bad for us since mid-May, worse than the typical ebay rollercoaster ride. We've about given up on trying to figure out this mess. A perfect example, all the way till 7/17 sales were down than usual and then from 7/18-7/24 someone opened up the faucet at eBay. It was like we had our old sales back for a week and I was like finally whatever was broke is fixed.

Fast forward to yesterday, 7/25 and now we are back at the very bad sales numbers. There is no explanation or rhyme or reason to any of this anymore.